The tyrant of the Chersonese Was freedom's best and bravest friend; That tyrant was Miltiades! Oh! that the present hour would lend Another despot of the kind! Such chains as his were sure to bind. Fill high the bowl with Samian wine! Such as the Doric mothers bore; Trust not for freedom to the FranksThey have a king who buys and sells; In native swords, and native ranks, The only hope of courage dwells; But Turkish force, and Latin fraud, Would break your shield, however broad. Fill high the bowl with Samian wine! I see their glorious black eyes shine; Place me on Sunium's marbled steep, Where nothing, save the waves and I, May hear our mutual murmurs sweep; There, swan-like, let me sing and die: A land of slaves shall ne'er be mineDash down yon cup of Samian wine! PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY 1792-1822 HELLAS THE world's great age begins anew, The earth doth like a snake renew Her winter weeds outworn: Heaven smiles, and faiths and empires gleam. Like wrecks of a dissolving dream. A brighter Hellas rears its mountains From waves serener far; A new Peneus rolls his fountains Against the morning star. Where fairer Tempes bloom, there sleep A loftier Argo cleaves the main, And loves, and weeps, and dies. O write no more the tale of Troy, Another Athens shall arise, And to remoter time Bequeath, like sunset to the skies, The splendour of its prime; And leave, if nought so bright may live, O cease! must hate and death return? The world is weary of the past, WILD WITH WEEPING My head is wild with weeping for a grief To seek,-or haply, if I sought, to find; TO THE NIGHT SWIFTLY walk over the western wave, Out of the misty eastern cave Where, all the long and lone daylight, Wrap thy form in a mantle grey Blind with thine hair the eyes of Day, Then wander o'er city and sea and land, When I arose and saw the dawn, When light rode high, and the dew was gone Thy brother Death came, and cried Thy sweet child Sleep, the filmy-eyed, Death will come when thou art dead, Sleep will come when thou art fled; TO A SKYLARK HAIL to thee, blithe Spirit! Pourest thy full heart In profuse strains of unpremeditated art. Higher still and higher From the earth thou springest, The blue deep thou wingest, And singing still dost soar, and soaring ever singest In the golden lightning Of the sunken sun O'er which clouds are brightening, Thou dost float and run Like an unbodied joy whose race is just begun. The pale purple even Melts around thy flight: Like a star of heaven In the broad daylight Thou art unseen, but yet I hear thy shrill delight; Keen as are the arrows Of that silver sphere, Whose intense lamp narrows In the white dawn clear Until we hardly see, we feel that it is there. |